The Argument from Psychological Egoism to Ethical Egoism By: Terrance C. McConnell McConnell, Terrance C. “The Argument from Psychological Egoism to Ethical Egoism,” Australasian Journal of Philosophy 56(1) (May 1978), pp. 41-47. Made available courtesy of Taylor & Francis http://www.taylorandfrancisgroup.com/ The original publication can be found at http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00048407812341041 ***Note: Figures may be missing from this format of the document Article: Part I Psychological egoism is the view that each person is so constituted that he always seeks his own advantage or best interest. This thesis makes the factual claim that human nature is such that no person can perform an act unless he believes that it is in his best interest. According to psychological egoism there are two sorts of acts that a person cannot perform: ones that he believes to be contrary to his best interests and ones about which he has no beliefs (with respect to how they relate to his interests). Ethical egoism is the view that a person's only obligation is to promote his own best interest.1 While psychological egoism purports to tell us how people do in fact behave, ethical egoism tells us how people ought to behave. It is sometimes claimed that psychological egoism, if true, lends support to ethical egoism. Specifically, it is supposed that the truth of ethical egoism follows from two premises: one asserting the truth of psychological egoism, and the other stating the principle that 'ought' implies 'can'. One can see that the argument has some intuitive appeal. The first premise says that it is impossible for a person to do anything but seek his own good. And the second premise says that we are never required to do the impossible. So it would seem that we can infer the truth of ethical egoism from these premises. The validity of this argument is rarely challenged. The usual criticism is that the argument is unsound because psychological egoism is false.2 So even if the conclusion follows from the premises, we need not be committed to ethical egoism. But even if this defeats the argument, it would still be interesting to know if the conclusion really does follow from the premises. If additional premises are required to make the argument valid, premises as dubious as psychological egoism itself, then the argument is even weaker than it is normally supposed to be. Paul Taylor, in his recent book Principle of Ethics considers a familiar criticism which challenges the adequacy of the argument.3 The criticism is intended to be a reductio ad absurdum, an attempt to show that anyone who maintains both psychological egoism and ethical egoism is committed to a position that no one can accept. The criticism is this. Psychological egoism asserts that it is impossible for anyone to do anything other than seek his own good. Ethical egoism tells us that a person ought to promote his own interests. Surely, though, it is odd to require a person to do what he cannot help but do. One purpose of a moral theory is to guide human behaviour, to direct people to do acts that are judged to be right according to the system and to avoid those acts that are wrong. If psychological egoism is true, ethical egoism will be superfluous as a guide to human behaviour. A person will be unable to avoid doing what he ought to do. Or as Taylor puts it (p. 35), each person will at every moment be acting in a morally perfect way. But surely this is absurd. A theory which has as a consequence that no one can ever do anything wrong must be rejected. So, contrary to what many have held, psychological egoism does not support ethical egoism. In fact, if the two theories are jointly maintained, one is led to absurdity. Though this might appear to be a decisive objection, Taylor himself (p. 35) suggests a way that the ethical egoist might respond to this criticism. It is true that people always seek their own good; they always do what they believe is in their best interests. But ethical egoism requires us to do what is really in our best interests. And each of us is all too familiar with the phenomenon of misjudging what is in his best interests. A person sometimes believes that one thing will maximize his own good only to discover later that he was mistaken about this. So the criticism spelled out above can be answered. People can do wrong acts, even if psychological egoism and ethical egoism are both true. Ethical egoism, then, is not superfluous as a guide to behaviour. The theory cautions people to examine their beliefs about what is in their best interests, warning them not to sacrifice their long-range good for some short-range goal. The egoist's reply to this objection can be understood easily if we appeal to a distinction common in ethical theory, that between the objective moral status of an act and the subjective moral status of an act. The objective moral status of an act is the moral status the act has in virtue of its actual circumstances and consequences. The subjective moral status of an act is the status it has in virtue of the beliefs that the agent has concerning its circumstances and consequences. Thus one may have an objective duty to do one thing, but a subjective duty to do something else. This kind of situation can arise whenever an agent has false beliefs about the actual circumstances in which his act is to be performed. Given this distinction, it is clear why the egoist is able to escape the above objection. If one holds both psychological egoism and ethical egoism, then one must say that there is a sense in which a person can do no wrong acts. Each person will always do his subjective moral duty. Since, by hypothesis, each person always seeks his own good, he will always do what he would do if he were a conscientious ethical egoist. But in another sense it is obvious that people can do wrong acts. A person can fail to do his objective moral duty when he has false beliefs about what will maximize his own good.4 So when ethical egoism is understood to be a theory about what our objective moral duty is, the above objection does not show that the argument from psychological egoism to ethical egoism fails. Part II The question about the validity of the argument from psychological egoism to ethical egoism, then, comes to this: Does the truth of ethical egoism, when construed as a theory about what our objective moral duty is, follow from psychological egoism and the principle that 'ought' implies 'can'? Taylor, after he indicates how the egoist can respond to his objection, goes on to criticise psychological egoism (pp. 36-45). One gets the impression from this that taylor believes the argument is valid and the only way to avoid its conclusion is to show that it has at least one false premise. But is this correct? To answer this we must set out the specific steps of the argument. Let us state the first premise, that psychological egoism is true, as follows. (1) A person cannot perform an act that he does not believe to be in his best interests. The second premise is the claim that 'ought' implies 'can', and it may be stated as follows. (2) If an act is one that a person ought to perform, then it must be an act that the person can perform. Does the truth of ethical egoism follow from these premises? What follows immediately from (1) and (2) is (3) It is not the case that a person ought to perform an act that he does not believe to be in his best interests. Notice that the claim in (3) is not that it would be wrong for someone to perform an act that he does not believe to be in his best interests. No statement of the form 'ought not' follows from (1) and (2). What is asserted in (3) is that no one is morally required to perform such an act; this is a 'not ought' statement. Thus (3) alone is not equivalent to ethical egoism. Some additional premise, (4), is needed so that we might derive, (5) Ethical egoism is the correct moral theory. What is this missing premise? The assertion in line (3) establishes a requirement that any adequate moral theory must satisfy. If an ethical system requires someone to do something that he does not believe to be in his best interests, it will be incompatible with (1) and (2) (which we are assuming to be true). This suggests that the egoist's missing premise might be (4a) Ethical egoism is the only moral theory that satisfies the injunction in (3). If (4a) is true, we might well be entitled to assert (5). But surely (4a) is false. Ethical egoism itself (understood as a theory about what our objective moral duty is) does not satisfy the requirement set out in (3). Ethical egoism does on some occasions require one to do acts that he (erroneously) does not way for the ethical egoist to escape Taylor's objection. So (4a) cannot be the missing premise. It is clear that (4a) makes a claim that is too strong. We need a weaker premise, but one which will still allow us to infer (5). Perhaps the following is the missing premise. It is clear that (4a) makes a claim that is too strong.